The Holiday Season
by Excalibur's Scabbard
Summary: It's a week before Christmas and James Lester has just lost his job. Jess/Lester, AU. Strong profanity and rat lovers stay well away! Written for the LJ Primeval Denial Secret Santa.


**Title:** The Holiday Season  
**Word Count:** 4081  
**Rating: **T  
**Characters/Pairing: **Lester/Jess, Becker/Sarah (cameos: Helen, Claudia).

**Summary: **It's a week before Christmas and James Lester has just lost his job.

**Warnings: **Both Lester and Jess swear a fair bit.  
**Spoilers:** None.  
**Authors Notes:** This is a Secret Santa for Dreamer_98 (on LiveJournal), whose prompts of 'travelling abroad' and 'when your dreams are crushed' I've mixed slightly. Somehow a couple of film plotlines snuck in as well (The Holiday and A Good Year, if anyone's interested)

James Lester came into consciousness slowly and drowsily, with the uncertainty of one who knew that he should be in a deep slumber but for one reason or another was not. His ears were unusually alert for such an early hour. They strained for sound and winced when they found it. His thin partition wall did nothing to block the sounds of his brother and his fiancée going at it in the adjoining bedroom.

Groaning, James rolled over and shoved his head under a pillow. Another perfect day was waiting for him. Getting out of bed was always a tenuous game, but this morning his body seemed even more reluctant than usual to escape its cocoon of warmth.

Soaking in the lukewarm patter of water that his shower was only capable of producing, he attempted to wake up a little. The editor he worked under was very finicky when it came to punctuality; one of her many pedantic eccentricities.

His day went from bad to worse as his razor slipped and James found himself with a mixture of blood and shaving foam dribbling down his chin. Wincing, he applied pressure while picking out his most demure tie. This didn't feel like a particularly festive day and he discarded the many novelty garments he had received from his mother over the years.

Usually he only had time for a coffee in the morning but his unfortunate awakening in the early hours by his housemates and occasional relatives' incessant fornicating meant that he had time to make himself some toast as well.

Basking in the new luxury of being able to eat before lunch, James suddenly lost his appetite when his baby brother Hilary wandered into the kitchen wearing nothing but a towel that he was sure was meant for drying hands and not covering crotches.

"This was a perfectly good piece of toast until you went and ruined it," he told his brother petulantly, absent mindedly waving the offending bread at him.

Hilary smiled a tight grin. "You're right, it does smell good and I've really worked up an appetite this morning."

James was long used to his baby brother's constant jests but chucked the toast at him anyway while gathering his jacket around him in a controlled and mature manner. "Have it then. I'm off."

Hilary's fiancée wandered around the corner just as James was slipping his feet into highly polished black shoes. Sarah had a vaguely Mediterranean look to her and together the couple's aesthetic was prettier than it had any right to be, especially when they were both freshly showered and clad only in towels. Uncomfortable, James muttered a vague "see you later" and "there's butter in the fridge" before slipping out into the semi-fresh London air.

James loved his job. He often thought that he had no right to be the overall circulation manager of The Telegraph, especially considering that before being hired he had never read anything except the FT and the occasional _Hello _supplement (the latter of which he blamed wholeheartedly on Sarah). But circulation was simplistic in its principal which meant that James generally delegated and sat back with a cup of tea for most of the day.

This was why he was slightly put out to be ordered to the editor's office for a meeting at nine am… absolutely prompt. Most underlings made a habit of arriving at least half an hour beforehand in case they should be detained and so much as a second late. But James considered himself to be of higher ranking and strolled into the editor's secretary's office with five minutes to spare.

"Cutting it fine, aren't we James?" The woman smiled tentatively at him. Claudia Brown was the nicest woman he'd ever had the pleasure of meeting, which was a little strange as she worked directly for the woman who was undoubtedly the meanest. She dressed in soft colours which complemented her auburn hair and refreshingly feminine figure. Half the men in the office were lusting after her but James was privy to the top secret information that she was actually after her boss's husband, a scruffy and obviously masochistic bloke.

He mocked tipping his hat to her, as he wasn't actually wearing a hat. "As ever, Miss Brown."

Claudia was far too polite to do something as insubordinate as rolling her eyes but he could sense her disproval as she tapped a short sequence of numbers into the phone and announced his arrival. She hesitated a moment and then nodded to him with a surprisingly sympathetic expression. "She'll see you now."

He took a moment to straighten his demure tie before striding into the Editor's office. The woman behind the desk didn't give him so much as a cursory glance, shuffling some papers before finally deigning to make eye contact with her employee.

Helen Cutter was one of a kind. She was young for the post, younger than James was but somehow looked older. Her plethora of life experience was written in the lines of her face, he had heard through the office grapevine that there was nothing she hadn't done; from white water rafting to publishing a book on her theories of genetic mutation. She wasn't the smartest dresser in the office and wore incurably masculine trousers; it came as a surprise to most people that she was married (however happily or unhappily) to a Professor of Zoology.

"You know I don't like fooling around, James," she spoke in that soft yet sharp voice of hers. "So let's just cut to the chase. Oliver Leek works twice as hard as you do for half the salary. He doesn't drain our tea supplies nor does he spend most of the day making scathing comments to the people who work under him. You are fired, and Leek will take your job."

For a moment, James just sat there as though he'd forgotten how to open his mouth. Then the words flooded out. "Oliver _Leek_, also known as the creepiest workaholic ever to _grace _these corridors! Absolutely not! I will not let you kick me out of my job and let _Oliver Fucking Leek_ take it instead!"

Helen cocked a perfectly shaped eyebrow towards him. "Really James, language like that will not help you keep your job. I want your resignation on Claudia's desk by the end of the day."

And that was that. Wham, bam, thank you bloody ma'am. He was fired.

He saw no reason to stick around at the office after that. Helen had a commonly boasted of sadistic streak and doubtless by lunchtime the entire company, right down to the lady that brought him digestives in afternoon meetings, would know about him losing his job. The bitch could go without her bloody letter of resignation.

So instead, James cleared the contents of his desk into a plastic bag. It didn't take long. He hadn't plastered it with photographs like some of his more sentimental colleagues. There was just one of Hilary, Sarah, himself and an old girlfriend, Christine. He'd never bothered to replace it after they had broken up because it was one of the only ones he owned of the three of them together.

His mug went in the bag with the photograph, and his special sticky notes. He contemplated for a moment, then went into the control panel on his computer and selected the option to reformat his hard drive, wiping it completely clean. He'd like to see Helen and Leek muddle their way through the next few days without any kind of circulation coordination whatsoever.

James would have liked to say goodbye to colleagues, friends that he had somehow unwilling collected over the years. Connor, who had shared his flat before Hilary and Sarah had moved in, Abby, his girlfriend, Matt and Emily who shared the commitments column and Jenny, who was Claudia's twin sister and Lester's fling for a while before she had moved departments…

But he didn't want to humiliate himself now. His friends would still be there tomorrow and very unfortunately, he told himself, he had all their numbers in his phone.

It was strange getting the tube home in the middle of the morning rather than late in the evening but James took it all in his stride, honestly too numb to do anything else. He clutched his meagre bag of possessions against his chest and pushed his way through the crowds in his rush to get the hell back to his flat and collapse on his own sofa.

Hilary usually left shortly after James did to open the gun shop he owned, but Sarah would still be at home most likely; her first school tour around the Natural History Museum often started in the afternoon and she proclaimed that mornings off were the best part of her job. James was glad of her hours right now; company in the form of Sarah's quiet sympathy would be infinitely preferable to Hilary's brash bull in a china shop attitude.

His brother's fiancée craned her neck around the corner from her position watching 'This Morning' on the settee. "James?" She sounded surprised. "What the hell are you doing back here so early? I only just got dressed for Christ's sake."

He dropped his expensive leather briefcase in the hall and kicked it to one side, hoping that it was scuffed. "I just got fucking fired."

Saying the words made him feel better somehow, as if some of the anger and disappointment had been elevated from his shoulders. Sarah regarded him in a way that was mercifully not judgemental and heaved herself from the sofa to give him a warm hug. The vague scent of citrus wafted up his nose and cut sharply through his gloom. It was strangely refreshing.

"You know what you need?" Sarah said, pulling back and wryly raising one eyebrow.

"What's that then?" James asked in his weariest tone.

She grinned in a way that he associated with trouble and inside he trembled, knowing that what would follow would be soul crushing. Maybe not as crushing as losing his job. But crushing enough to finish him off perhaps.

"Popcorn and a rom-com," she said in a way that did not allow for any compromise and released him to possibly find some of the disgusting crunchy microwave crap she kept bulk buying.

He let his limbs transmute to jelly and deposit him squarely on his sofa, groaning in physical relief. Evidently, as Connor had been teasing him ever since he'd moved in with Abby, he was getting old enough to retire. But that wasn't going to happen. Now that Helen had taken his job and given in to Leek.

The microwave pinged vaguely in the background and soon Sarah bustled back in the living room to deposit an enormous bowl of deliciously scented microwave crap on his lap. "Thanks," he muttered quietly, picking up a piece and flicking it into his mouth. She poked her tongue out at him and shimmied down onto her belly; her drawer of DVDs was pulled out. Sick of rifling through rom-coms and action movies every time he wanted to watch his police and crime box sets, James had bought on an impulse a wide set of three drawers for each inhabitant of the flat to keep their own DVDs in.

Sarah was rifling through her own nauseating collection of chick flicks, holding up film after film with some soppy couple on the front. "Something festive," she mumbled, seemingly to herself before drawing out a movie called, James squinted… The Holiday.

"This cannot be good," he told her, crunching down on a buttery kernel.

Sarah shook her head at him. "It's actually pretty decent; about these two women who swap houses and…" she trailed off, noticing his raised eyebrow. "It's got Cameron Diaz in it," she wheedled.

James sat back in the sofa, waving a hand absent mindedly. "Fine then, I submit."

She grinned victoriously and slid the disc into their DVD player and then one of those many unbearable chick flicks that he tried desperately to avoid played onto the screen. As entertainment value went it wasn't bad, considering that the heroines of the tale were pathetic and uptight respectively. Still, when the credits rolled he'd have been hard-pushed to tell you what the film was actually about.

Sarah still sat staring at the TV, and then all of a sudden she jumped up and grabbed her laptop. "I know what we can do to get you back on your feet!"

"I've been unemployed for about three hours," he pointed out, with the air of a man who knows that the cause he is fighting is totally lost.

As expected, Sarah dismissed his comment with a wave of her hand and typed "vacation spots" into Google search, selecting a home exchange website from the listings while James watched in growing horror.

"Somewhere that nobody speaks English!" He intervened, voice fraught with stress and Sarah, perhaps in sympathy, clicked on France.

"Look at these!" She exclaimed, angling the monitor of her laptop towards him. He squinted but couldn't see exactly what she was so excited about. Seemingly at random, she selected a home with a picture of a trampoline outside the house. "It's in Cannes, you know, the red carpet place."

James rolled his eyes. "And a four-bedroom. That's hardly going to make me forget how much I've screwed up my life is it?"

Sarah shook at her head at him but chose a different photo. "Look, it's a flat and it's in Paris. One bedroom and nobody will speak English. Heaven, right?"

James grinned ironically. "Absolutely. Sign me up."

Head of circulation paid, _had_ paid, very well and James found to his relief that he wouldn't have to fly with the ragtag bunch that made up the economy class. Although it did seem a little ironic that he was using business class to go on holiday, especially with most of his flying companions engrossed in their BlackBerrys or paperwork. Yesterday, that had been him.

Packing had been a nightmare, considering he'd lived in the flat since the age of about twenty and hadn't taken a holiday in about ten years. His stuff was all mixed up in Hilary's and Sarah's and extracting it was like a chemical process. His brother hadn't been too keen on the idea of someone coming to stay with them, either. He complained that he wouldn't be able to stroll around in a towel or watch gory TV shows but James had replied quite firmly that it would do him good.

He flicked through the entertainment magazine but as soon as he had read the editorial message (with a faint twinge in his gut) he felt himself dropping off so let himself snooze, just for a little while.

James felt groggy coming to and his head protested at the noise everyone was making. What was happening? Everybody was in the aisles. Then he realised that he must have slept through the whole damned hour of the flight. He'd meant to read his guide book of Paris and now he was actually in Paris without a clue of what he was going to do except find the apartment and pass out for even longer.

The apartment was even smaller than the advertisement had suggested. There was a small bedroom (with a double, thankfully), a bathroom a couple of square feet in size and a tiny living room/kitchenette. It took James less than twenty seconds to walk from one side of the flat to the other.

He had thought his possessions to be reasonably bereft and small in size but once in the apartment they filled it easily. His small collection of films to watch over the next fortnight was stacked like the Leaning Tower of Piza and his clothes were overflowing from the drawers. The man who owned this place, Philip something or other, must be one of those types that have a beautiful house in the country and a ratty flat in the city for work because there was no way that somebody could live here all the time.

He had finally cleared his suitcases and put his laptop on the coffee table when he realised that he had forgotten one of the most important items for travelling abroad. A plug adaptor.

"Sod it all," he muttered and grabbed his wallet which was now, courtesy of Thomson, full of euros. He locked the flat carefully behind him; there was no guaranteeing the types of people that inhabited this seedy block.

After some very awkward communication (for God's sake, who even knew the French for plug?) and a future improved ability at charades, James succeeded in purchasing an adaptor. Wiping tiny beads of sweat off his forehead, he meandered back towards the flat. Paris was very busy at noon and James contemplated stopping for some lunch at one of those charming Parisian cafés. But he pushed on back towards the flat, in case he forgot the way. It would be just the sort of thing that might happen to him after the shoddy week that he'd had.

The key clicked in the lock instantly and the door opened. James felt a shadow of paranoia settle over him. He turned that lock three times and now it had just opened instantly, like somebody had unlocked it while he was out. Which meant that somebody might still be in here.

James looked around the entrance, silently cursing Philip's sparse nature. If he had been at home in lovely cold, snowy England in his nice warm flat right now, he could have picked up his dad's old golf club which had been in the hall stand since the beginning of time. But he was not in cold, snowy England in his nice warm flat, so he was going to have to improvise.

He sidled carefully round to the kitchen but before he could make a smart and useful move like grab an implement from the knife rack a woman came bustling out from the living room with a mop in one hand and a dead rat in the other.

Despite the corpse and the cleaning utensil, the woman was actually a rather charming visage. She had soft brown hair and the clearest blue eyes he had ever seen, with flawlessly pale skin which spoke of far too much time being spent inside. Then, quite spontaneously and without warning, she screamed.

"Er, sorry," James said on uncomfortable French. "Did Philip not tell you that another man was staying in his flat for some weeks?"

She stared at him, and then opened her mouth again. James winced in sympathy for his ears. But thankfully all that came out was a lot of French jabber. "Sorry?" He asked in English.

"Well why didn't you say you were from the bloody UK?" The woman said in an irate and very British tone. "I don't like having to put on the poncy French accent but people talk down to me in this patronising sort of manner if they think I'm English – and it really is a pain in the arse – I'm Philip's neighbour Jess; he pays me to do the cleaning because although I'm total shit at domesticity at least I can tell one end of a broom from another whereas Philip wouldn't know bleach if someone threw it in his face… I'm sorry. What did you say your name was?"

He stared at her in stunned silence, trying to regain the means to speak. "James."

"Well James I hope you don't mind me doing your cleaning because Philip _does _pay me pretty well and I can be a vicious bugger when it comes to this rat infestation that he's got although you'll have to handle the spiders yourself – I'm allergic – and I'll be in every day at noon just to mop and kill rats and sweep a little bit, okay?" She dropped the rat out of the open window and leaned the mop against the wall. "See you tomorrow!"

And with that, she left the apartment.

James sat down, still in numb shock. He'd never heard somebody talk that much in his whole life; she was like a whirlwind, an incredible force but gone in moments. He needed a coffee to bloody recover.

Jess kept her word and came every day at noon with surprising punctuality for somebody who spent most of her cleaning time making small (big) talk. She kept James from being poisoned when he tried to slice his banana with her 'rat-stabbing knife' and sometimes brought coffee and pastries from the patisserie round the corner from the seedy block. And before he knew it, he had managed to make a friend.

Despite her rather overbearing nature, James soon learnt that though she had many things to say on many different subjects, that all came second to eating pain au raisin so if he wanted to talk to her rather than vice versa then all he had to do was make a special visit to the patisserie. She liked her coffee with as much hot, frothy milk as humanly possible and used vinegar to clean the toilet.

She was nothing like any of his old girlfriends. His last romantic foray had been with a sub-editor, Christine, who was ruthless, ambitious and hot as hell. Jess was sweet, talkative, lived in a seedy flat and was _pretty_.

James was just a little bit in love with her.

Almost a week passed like lightning. He saw more Paris tourist attractions than he'd ever thought possible. Walked a length of the Seine. Drank coffee in a hundred Parisian cafés. Eaten strange food in several cute little bistros and diners.

The morning of Christmas day he woke up in his bed, which was surprisingly comfortable given the quality of the rest of the furnishings in the flat, and contemplated on what he was going to do today. A grin spread across his face as an idea came to her and he pulled on the only pair of jeans that he owned. Leaving the flat, locked down as well as ever, he took two steps towards his destination and knocked hard on the door of the neighbouring flat.

"-What the bloody hell?" Jess asked, opening the door before she caught sight of his face. When she did, her own brightened. "James! Come in my dear fellow...and merry Christmas! Wait, you don't want me to do extra cleaning, do you?"

He assured her that that was not the case and stepped inside. Despite the fact that she had been in his flat almost every day, he still had not seen an inch of hers up until now. It was much better decorated and somehow more spacious although it had the exact same measurements as his. There was evidence of care and attention everywhere, and also technology. He counted four laptops and two desktops in his preliminary scan of her living room.

"Wow," he said. "This is quite something. You must have a better salary than mine to afford all of this!"

She blushed fairly modestly and moved towards the more open plan kitchen area to grab the kettle. "Oh it's nothing. My job is in technology so the employee discount is pretty good." This explanation sufficed for James, who indicated his preference for tea over instant coffee or 'a little glass of something Christmassy'.

"So what brings you round on this fine Christmas day, other than that you're a lonely old sod who only knows the woman who cleans his house in this entire city and craved a little bit of company?" She asked cheekily, poking his midsection.

"Hit the nail on the head," he toasted her with his mug, ignoring the bodily contact.

Jess grinned at him without abandon. "Well I suppose you'll want something to make that horrible journey to my equally horrible flat worthwhile?"

James smiled right back. "You have a present for me?"

Instead of producing some kind of heinously wrapped parcel from behind her back, Jess leaned up and pecked him lightly on the lips.

He pretended to be lost in thought for a moment. Then slowly smiled at her. "Sucker for bargains, aren't you?" He asked her, before letting an arm slip around her waist and pulling her closer in for a longer, deeper kiss.

"You're right," she said slightly breathlessly, an eternity later. "I must invest more in my presents."


End file.
